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Table of Contents

The following guide contains instruction on playing Hybrid Shaman. This is an
aggressive deck that plays additional tools for board development such as
Thing from Below. It was created by Na'vi's Xixo
who has used it to great success on ladder.

The Karazhan Adventure introduced Maelstrom Portal to the deck, which
may seem like a strange inclusion in an aggressive deck but can go a long way
to help break early board struggles in your favour. On top of this,
Spirit Claws can easily represent 9 damage for 1 Mana in this deck
due to the addition of multiple Spell Damage minions.

1. About the Author

This deck is presented to you by Sottle,
a professional Hearthstone player who plays for compLexity Gaming.
Sottle regularly streams on Twitch and explains all of his moves. Watching him is a good opportunity to see how
this and other decks play out in practice, and how decisions are made in real time.

2.1. Mana Curve

0

10

9

6

0

3

2

0

3. Strategy

Tempo Shaman is a deck that takes the shell of aggressive Shaman decks
and makes a few tweaks to allow them a bit more longevity in a long game, whilst
still packing a huge punch of aggressive damage. It moves away from all-in cards
such as Flamewreathed Faceless and instead plays a more solid and consistent
curve of minions and removal, whilst still maintaining aggression.

You should mulligan extremely hard for Tunnel Trogg in every matchup,
since the platform it provides the deck to build on is very valuable. If you do
have access to a Tunnel Trogg on turn 1, you can then begin to use Overload
cards to snowball your board position and push a huge amount of damage through
to the opponent. Following a Tunnel Trogg with Totem Golem, or with
Feral Spirit using The Coin will create a great deal of pressure
on your opponent.

Maelstrom Portal is introduced to the deck due partly to how effective
it is against common meta cards like Onyxia, Forbidden Ritual,
and Violet Teacher. On top of this however, it is just an excellent tool
for winning early struggles for the board that you will encounter when facing
off against other aggressive decks such as Zoo Warlock. Particularly when combined
with the Spell Damage Totem or Spell Damage minions it can be devastating in these matchups, but even without
it, it can help you to make much more favourable trades, while still gaining the
extra Tempo of a free small minion.

Spirit Claws is an addition to the deck that is flexible in different
matchups. In matchups where the fight for early board is crucial, you should
keep this card in your opening hand and use the small sources of damage to help
you break the early struggle with your opponent's minions. Against Control decks
however, Spirit Claws is better used in the mid- or late-game to push through
huge damage in conjunction with Spell Damage minions. The extra damage from
Spirit Claws is the reason why Doomhammer is restricted to a single copy
in this deck, since there are a huge number of total turns of weapon usage in
the deck already.

Since this deck relies on board presence to get maximum value out of cards such
as Flametongue Totem and Abusive Sergeant, you will need to seek
favourable trades when you can in order to build a more oppressive board. Although attacking the Hero directly gets you
damage immediately, it can present more favourable trades for your opponent,
which will reduce the amount of damage you gain over several turns. In some
situations it is better to take favourable trades on the board that keep your
minions alive, since this will create more damage for you in total over the
next few turns. This is a particularly strong consideration if trading protects
your valuable minions like Tunnel Trogg or if your board can be leveraged on a
following turn with the aforementioned minions.

The perfect scenario to solve this dilemma is to get 1 or 2 minions consolidated
on the board, and then use your removal spells like Lightning Bolt and
Rockbiter Weapon to remove your opponent's minions. This is particularly
potent if you have a Tunnel Trogg in play, since all of your Overload
removal cards will increase its damage.

Managing your Overload in this deck is crucial. Although the Overload cards
are excellent for buffing your Tunnel Trogg they can also disrupt your
followup turns. Generally, there are certain turns where you do not want to
Overload, such as turn 4 if you have a Doomhammer in hand. Playing a
Doomhammer on turn 5 is crucial for this deck as it represents 16 damage over
the following turns. This turn is so powerful against certain classes like
Rogue or Freeze Mage, that you will often need to
deliberately make a suboptimal turn on turn 4 in order to avoid overloading.

In the mid-game, Doomhammer will enable you to create repetitive
damage over the course of several turns, and create a lot of pressure on your
opponent's life total. Alternatively, you can use Doomhammer as a clearing tool
if your own life is high enough in order to clear the path for your minions.
This is a hugely important card since it allows you to keep pace with Control
classes like Priest and Warrior who are able to mitigate some of your damage
with their Hero Power. Doomhammer is also particularly powerful in this deck
because it will apply a buff to any Tunnel Troggs you have in play.

As mentioned before, the deck does have more tools for longevity than previous
builds of aggressive Shaman since Bloodmage Thalnos and Azure Drake
provide you with additional card draw, and the addition of Hex can help
you to deal with late-game minions that would often represent too big a threat if
the game went long. Due to this fact, it is sometimes correct to play persistently
for board Control and grind your opponent out of the game. This is most often true
against other Midrange decks that will run themselves out of resources if you
get consistent value from your weapons and Totems to grind them down. Come turn
6-7, evaluate the state of the game and decide how aggressive you need to be based
on your opponent's hand size, your own hand, and the state of the board.

When you are looking to make the final push for damage, the deck plays a
large amount of options to create burst damage from the hand.
Rockbiter Weapon allows you to do 10 damage with an equipped
Doomhammer, while cards like Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst can
be combined to create a huge amount of damage. It is not uncommon with this
deck to burst your opponent down from 20+ health in a single turn if you have
minions on board.

When looking to set up these final pushes over the last couple of turns, it
is important to consider all your opponent's defensive options and work out the
most likely method for sealing the win. If you expect your opponent to
Taunt, you should look to invest damage from Weapons, Rockbiter Weapon
and Minions first, then follow up with the Spells once they play their Taunt. This is particularly
powerful now that Loatheb, which could have punished you for dealing damage in this order, has left the format. This practice of maximising damage over time against your opponent's expected
options is one of the key skills in playing Aggro and will take practice to
perfect.

3.2. Mulligans & Matchup Specific Strategies

Your Mulligan will involve looking for the fastest possible start. The key
cards to facilitate this are Totem Golem and Tunnel Trogg. Tunnel
Trogg is particularly important and should be mulliganed for as hard as
possible in every matchup. Outside of this, your other strong early game cards
are Argent Squire and Feral Spirit with The Coin. If you
have Tunnel Trogg already, you can keep Overload cards like
Lightning Bolt in order to clear the way for your
Trogg to do repetitive damage.

Against Aggro you should favour keeping a Rockbiter Weapon or
Lightning Bolt alongside your early minions in order to fight back
against the fast starts of your opponent, especially if you are going second. It is important however, not to keep
too reactive a hand since you do still want to be playing the aggressor against
every deck. Spirit Claws and Maelstrom Portal are also hugely
important in these matchups as the source of 1 damage that does not slow you
down to play can make a huge difference in the early minion exchanges.

Against Control you should just push for the fastest possible start to consolidate
yourself as the aggressor in the matchup.

3.3. Card Swaps

Hex, Lava Burst, and Doomhammer are the flexible
cards in this deck and you should adjust the numbers of each to react to
what you are playing against.